Looking for free translation?
'Free translation', 'automatic translation', and 'machine translation' are all ways of referring to
translations created entirely by software. The software uses a combination of algorithms and statistical methods
to generate translations with no human intervention.
Automatic translation has one great thing going for it - it's free. If the purpose of your translation is to
quickly get a sense of the point of some material (such as a website or news article in a foreign language),
automatic translation is ideal for you.
If your purpose is to market or promote your company, or to convey sensitive complex information (such as in
user manuals or technical documents), automatic translation is not yet at the point where it can be relied upon. In
this kind of situation free translation can be a 'penny wise and pound foolish' choice - although you save money
now, it will cost you later on.
In some cases a combination of automatic translation and human translation can lead to an optimal combination
of cost and quality. This kind
of 'hybrid' workflow is a specialty of Elanex - contact us for a free consultation with
one of our experts on what kind of approach may be most cost-effective for you.
If you are convinced that quality of translation is not important to you, here are some links
to the top free translation services available today:
- Google language tools - including Google's free
translation service. Although the publicly
available translation on Google's site does not yet use the latest technology out of Google Labs, this
tool provides decent rule-based translation.
- Babel Fish free translation. The first and best-known online free
translation site, Babel Fish uses rule-based technology from
Systran to provide translations at a similar
level of quality to Google.
- Language Weaver machine translation software.
If you are looking to purchase an
automatic translation system, Language Weaver is one of the first to create systems based on a 'statistical'
machine translation approach, which yields significantly better results than the rule-based systems.